Читать книгу A Ripple from the Storm - Doris Lessing - Страница 7

Martha spent a good deal of time anxiously during the next few days because it seemed that she alone among ‘the group’ knew no one who was ‘ripe’. She had no relationships with anyone but the group, Mrs Buss and Mrs Carson. True that in her capacity as member of so many committees she had been presented suddenly with several dozen new acquaintances, all in love, in their various ways, with the Soviet Union because of the new, exultant public spirit; all willing to attend an indefinite number of meetings and lectures on the most diverse subjects. But she did not think they were ‘ripe’. She felt guilty that she had not been ‘working’ on them, so that at least some may have made the journey from a willing compliance with the yeasty new mood to the utter self-abnegation which was the essence of being ‘ripe’.

The people who were going to be brought to the decisive meeting all had close personal ties with members of the group. Martha pondered over this, and decided she was at fault because she had spent too much time with William; that the ardour she had devoted to William would, had she been a real communist, as Anton used the word, have been spent on several people. But it was only with half her mind she was able to believe she had been at fault. If she had longed for nothing else steadily all these years it was for a close complete intimacy with a man. She realized it was not Jasmine who had made her a member of the group, but William. If, then, she wished to influence other people to join the group, she would have to give them what she had given William? But it was impossible.

There is a type of woman who can never be, as they are likely to put it, ‘themselves’, with anyone but the man to whom they have permanently or not given their hearts. If the man goes away there is left an empty space filled with shadows. She mourns for the temporarily extinct person she can only be with a man she loves; she mourns him who brought her ‘self’ to life. She lives with the empty space at her side, peopled with the images of her own potentialities until the next man walks into the space, absorbs the shadows into himself, creating her, allowing her to be her ‘self’ – but a new self, since it is his conception which forms her. Such a woman is recognizable often enough not by her solitude but the variety and number of her acquaintances and friends with whom she may be intimate but who, as far as she is concerned, do not ‘really’ know her.

Martha knew, with William gone, she was not so much lonely as self-divided. Her loneliness, the moments when she said to herself, ‘I am lonely,’ had a pleasurable pain; her old enemy, the dishonesty of nostalgia, was very close, and the ease with which she succumbed to it made her irritated with herself. For she was being nostalgic for something she had already outgrown. Her ‘self’ with William was something she had never been before, it was true: they had been like two children, playing inside the shelter of the group, they had been almost brother and sister. They had spoken of meeting after the war, but that was in their roles of being in love, being lovers, and it was not the truth. Already Martha was impatient to be rid of that image of herself, so much less than she was capable of being. But who, next, would walk into the empty space? She knew of no one; not one of the men about her now fed her imagination, or at least, not more than for a few moments of fantasy.

Meanwhile, she told herself, she must become a good communist. And she must recognize that while she had certain capacities as a communist others would always be beyond her. For instance, she could never ‘work’ on people. She would find Anton at some suitable moment and ask if a real communist, a good comrade, could simply admit to herself that she had limitations.

The thought of this interview with Anton gave her sensuous pleasure. The individual members of the group had all exchanged personal confessions, in a compulsive desire to share everything of themselves. Anton did not. One could not imagine him doing so. At the end of a meeting, or during an interval between meetings, when the others sat around in couples, talking of their pasts in a way which made them offerings to the future, he would dryly excuse himself and go off back to the hotel room where he lived.

But they all knew that in the same hotel stayed the Austrian woman Toni Mandel; and while his private life was certainly his own affair (even though they all insisted their private lives must be subordinated to the group) they could not help feeling she was not worthy of them. At meetings she would clutch his arm with both hands, looking up into his face with a great deal of arch vivacity. Walking along the pavements towards or away from meetings she tripped beside Anton, letting out small cries of laughter. She was an elderly girl, rather lean and dry, wearing strict broad-shouldered suits in the style of Marlene Dietrich; her fair frizzy hair bounced and swung below her collarbones on either side of a long face irregularly patched with colour, which peered and poked and bridled and coquetted with life from behind stray locks of hair. It appeared that never for a moment did she feel free from the necessity of being gay. But once or twice, at meetings, when conversation and intimate whispers really were not possible, Martha had observed that this woman tended to stare in front of her, her mouth fallen open a little, her eyes fixed. As for Anton, he would regard the Austrian with a small smile which was tender, indulgent, fatherly; but Martha felt that this protective smile was for the arch little girl, and not for the haunted woman who was a refugee from Europe like himself. It was precisely this intuition that enabled her to think of discussing her deficiencies with him.

They had arranged to meet at six before the decisive meeting. On that afternoon Martha was busy delivering bundles of The Watchdog, the communist paper from down South, to various cafés and restaurants and stores which had agreed to sell it. Jasmine, who had been selling twelve copies of it for years, had handed over the organization to Martha, clearly feeling that she would do better to keep it in her own hands. Martha now sold fifty dozen. The glories of Stalingrad had created inexhaustible stores of goodwill and tolerance towards the inflammatory doctrines of The Watchdog in the bosoms of a couple of dozen penny-splitting shopkeepers. Martha had only to enter one of the Greek or Jewish cafés, or Indian stores with a bundle of Watchdogs whose headline was likely to be: Red Army Recaptures Rostov or The Heroic Defence of Kharkov, to find the proprietor smilingly agreeable at the idea of selling them for her. On this afternoon she set off on her bicycle as usual for the lower part of the town, going from one store to another. They were crowded with Africans. Their doorways were hung with bicycle frames and garlands of tyres, ropes of beads, garlic and lengths of bright cheap cotton. Each had a portable gramophone set on the pavement outside it, and the thin tinny jazz vibrated among the sunwaves which oiled and shimmered over the pavements and mingled with hot heady sweaty sun-fermented smells of the lower town. Sometimes a black man danced beside the gramophone, patting and feeling the pavement with his great cat’s feet, rolling his shoulders and his eyes and hips in a huge goodnature of enjoyment, while his eyes swivelled among the groups of passers-by, men and women, inviting them to join in, or at least to share his pleasure. Or he would look sombrely before him, nostalgic, Martha was convinced, for the veld. For she could never enter the lower town without being attacked by longing for the veld, and for her childhood. In each store she lingered a while at the counter among the bales of cottons and the jars of poisonous-bright sweets, sniffing in the smells of strong cheap dyes and sweat and soap, talking to the soft-faced smiling young Indian assistants, some of whom came regularly now to the Progressive Club meetings. Finally, her handbag heavy with small change, she directed her bicycle back towards the respectable part of the town, and with reluctance. On this afternoon it was nearly six when she had finished, and she was cycling past the station when she saw Mr Maynard at the wheel of a car parked outside the Magistrates’ Court. Beside him sat Mrs Talbot. Mrs Talbot was now cutting Martha; or rather, when her beautiful grey eyes happened to encounter hers – one felt always by accident – they assumed an expression of stunned grief, and lowered themselves, while her face put on a look of sullen withdrawal. She was wearing a grey silk suit, and there was a bunch of dark violets at her throat, and her pale face glimmered through a mist of dark pink gauze which emanated from some point towards the top of her head, where there were more violets. Clearly she had been one of the assistants at a wedding where Mr Maynard had been officiating. The wedding guests, stiff in dark suits from which sunburned hands and faces incongruously protruded, or in floral silk dresses and unaccustomed gloves and hats, were still dispersing along shabby confetti-dappled pavements. Mrs Talbot must have climbed into the car, Martha felt, as fast as she could, to save the scene embarrassment because of her incongruity in being part of it. Now she had one agitated hand on Mr Maynard’s dark-clothed arm, and he was leaning forward, his heavy, dark-jowled face above hers. ‘She’s asking advice about investments again,’ Martha decided; for she had observed that Mrs Talbot was never so helplessly feminine as when doing this. She passed the car in such a way that Mrs Talbot would not have the irritation of having pointedly to ignore her existence; but Mr Maynard’s melancholy bloodhound’s eyes rolled towards her and he said through the open window: ‘Wait for me, I want a word with you, young woman.’ Martha nodded, annoyed because of the ‘young woman’, but aware it was for the benefit of Mrs Talbot who – she perfectly understood the justice of this – would always exact from other people temporary fallings-off from their usual standards of behaviour. Martha wheeled the bicycle along the edge of the pavement and waited until Mr Maynard came level with her and said, with nothing of the ‘young woman’ in his tone: ‘Can you rest that machine a minute? I want to talk to you.’ Martha put the bicycle against the wall, and climbed into the car beside him, her arms full of Watchdogs.

Mr Maynard sat frowning. He was annoyed, but not with her. ‘What’s this I hear,’ he said at last, ‘about you refusing to give young Knowell a divorce?’

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘It did not strike me as likely, I admit.’

‘I’ve got to be somewhere at six,’ said Martha.

‘I took it for granted you would have to be somewhere – you always have. But it’s already past six, and you might as well make your apologies for a worthwhile lapse in punctuality.’

Martha thought of Anton waiting for her, fidgeted, and sat still.

‘It has been put to me,’ said Mr Maynard, abrupt because of his dislike at having to say any of this, ‘that you have allowed it to be understood that if young Knowell starts divorce proceedings against you you will start counter-proceedings against him on the grounds of adultery.’

Martha was half-numbed with anger and distaste. She said: ‘In other words, Mrs Talbot is frightened that her precious Elaine might be cited as co-respondent and has asked you to plead with me.’

‘You could put it like that.’ She turned her face away from him, fiddling with the door-handle as if about to jump out of the car. At the look of angry repulsion on her face he said quickly, laughing: ‘Any intelligent person knows that when two people get divorced, even if they are normally the most delightful and veracious couple in the world, not a word either of them says is to be believed.’

‘In that case, I don’t know why you bother to ask me questions.’ She opened the door and was about to leave him.

‘No, do wait a moment. Do wait.’ He, in his turn, had coloured: the handsome, heavy face was suffused with blood. He passed his hand over his eyes, which were closed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been put in a false position. I don’t know why I agreed to talk to you at all – but I suppose I must. Take me as an emissary. Just tell me, there’s a good girl, and let’s get it over with.’

‘All this business makes me sick,’ said Martha. ‘I don’t know why it has to be so – disgusting. I saw Douglas a few days ago, and he said he would divorce me for desertion and I agreed. Why shouldn’t I agree? I’m not going to get mixed up in all this.’

‘Mixed up? But aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not.’ At his ironical expression she went on: ‘If they want to make something ugly of it it’s their affair.’

‘Not yours?’

‘No. If Douglas tells Mrs Talbot I’m making a fuss it’s not because he wants an excuse not to marry Elaine, I’m sure he does …’

‘Why? I’m not sure at all.’

‘Obviously. The sooner he marries someone else the sooner his pride will be soothed, won’t it? Obviously he’ll marry someone or other before the year’s out – and there’s Elaine all conveniently on hand. He’ll marry the day after the decree’s absolute, just to show everyone.’

‘You mean, to show you?’

‘Me? said Martha, genuinely surprised. ‘Why me? He doesn’t care about me. He cares what people will say, that’s all.’

‘Ah,’ commented Mr Maynard.

‘And if Mrs Talbot knew anything about Douglas she’d know he’s only saying I won’t divorce him so that she and Elaine can feel terribly sorry for him, that’s all.’

‘I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that Douglas will never forgive you for not asking him to be chivalrous and allowing himself to be divorced?’

‘You mean, he won’t forgive me for not giving him the opportunity of looking noble in front of Mrs Talbot and Elaine – he’d get months of self-pity out of it.’

‘That degree of contempt is really not forgivable, you know,’ he commented at last, his voice ironically aggrieved as if it were he whom she accused.

‘Oh Lord, all I want is to be rid of the thing. I keep telling you …’ She stopped. After all, she had had no opportunity of telling him anything, and the you was collective, her old life which was in no way connected with what she was now.

‘Ah,’ said Mr Maynard, this time finally. He examined his fine handsome hand, back and front, for a few moments.

‘Well, your attitude seems to be clear, and I’ll take a suitable opportunity to convey your message to Mrs Talbot.’

‘I haven’t sent any message to Mrs Talbot.’

‘You can’t expect her to approve of you.’

‘I don’t see why not. Now she can have what she’s always wanted – that Elaine can marry Douglas. God knows why she wants it, but I always thought she did.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right. About this you’re very probably right.’ Martha turned her eyes on him, startled: the way he had said it applied a degree of knowledge – at the moment ironic – of Mrs Talbot that she had never suspected. He raised his eyes from a contemplation of his fingers, saw her look and said hastily: ‘Mrs Talbot and I are old friends.’

She shrugged, impatient at the idea that he might imagine she was interested one way or the other.

‘Well,’ he said, annoyed at her shrug, ‘I shall never succeed in fathoming the complicated depths of your morality, but if you’re shocked, as you appear to be, then I can only say you are quite devoid of a sense of humour.’

Again Martha shrugged. He examined her, noted she was pale, much thinner than he had ever seen her, and her mouth was set over unhappiness.

‘You miss your daughter?’ he inquired.

‘No,’ said Martha decisively, wincing.

‘Ah,’ he said, on a softer note. ‘Well, well. And you are going to marry that young man of yours?’

‘What young man? Oh, you mean William?’

‘I didn’t know there was another I might mean.’

‘He’s been posted. For taking part in politics,’ she added.

‘Quite right too.’

‘If people can die for politics I don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to take an active part in them.’

‘How naïve. Is that the line of that rag there?’ He reached over for a limp copy of The Watchdog and regarded its exclamatory front page with raised black brows.

‘So crude,’ said Martha.

‘Quite. I prefer my left-wing propaganda put into decent English and appearing in unobtrusive paragraphs in the serious weeklies where only reactionaries like myself can see them. I like them to begin: “According to our correspondent it is believed that there might be a possibility …” ‘ He smiled at her, inviting her to smile back. She did not smile.

‘Why do you call it propaganda? And, anyway, it’s not meant for you.’ She took back the paper and folded it into the pile of others.

‘It’s not, I should have thought, for you either.’

‘What’s the time?’ she asked.

‘Come and have a drink at the Club?’

‘At the Club!’ she said derisively.

‘Then come and have a cup of tea at Greasy Dick’s.’

‘I’m late, I told you.’

‘Are you making many recruits among the working masses?’

She grinned at him, for the first time, saying nothing.

‘Well, are you?’

‘I must go.’

‘No, wait a moment.’

‘Why, is there anything else?’

‘Actually there is. It’s about Binkie. You do, perhaps, remember my son?’

‘Well, of course.’

‘He has informed us that he intends to marry someone called Maisie. Do you know her?’

‘Don’t you? She was going around with Binkie for months.’

‘We were not aware of it. But it appears she is already twice a widow?’

‘Oh, so that RAF type got killed after all?’

‘As you remark. The RAF type got killed. And so did her first husband.’

‘Well, that’s not her fault, is it?’

‘Binkie is on leave and he insists on marrying Maisie at once. I saw her and when I asked her if she insisted she replied that she didn’t mind. Is she always so enthusiastic about her fiancés?’

‘Well, yes. She’s – good-natured,’ said Martha.

‘Good Lord.’

‘What do you want to find out about her?’

‘My wife has been in tears for three days now, but she is clearly on the point of finding Maisie a sweet girl. What I want to know is, shall I find her so?’

‘She’s not of your class,’ said Martha, ‘if that’s what you mean?’ She was conscious, in using the word to him, of paying tribute to old habits of their friendship: she had learned to use it politically and not socially. Again she felt dragged back into something she had outgrown, and resented him for it.

‘No, I do not. She may not be my class, but she is certainly Binkie’s. I want to know if she’ll be a good influence – you know, settling, soothing, that sort of thing. Or will they get divorced again on his next leave?’

‘They’ve known each other for years. But why don’t you talk to Binkie about it?’

His face went dark and he said: ‘I find it impossible to talk to anyone whose language consists entirely of primitive cries of pleasure or pain. Not that I am able to distinguish between them, of course.’ He leaned forward and laid a large hand on her knee. ‘My dear, would you go and talk to her for me?’

‘You want me to go and ask her not to marry Binkie?’ said Martha, shocked.

‘Why not? If she doesn’t care whom she marries? And I gather that’s what you meant? As far as I can see they’re getting married because they got tight together last week and the idea occurred to them.’

‘But Mr Maynard, judging from what you’ve said to me in the past, you think marriage is so idiotic anyway … and what difference does it make? If Binkie doesn’t marry Maisie he’ll marry one of them.’

‘One of who?’

‘The gang – the crowd. The group.’

‘You mean there’s nothing to choose between them?’

Martha made an impatient movement with her whole body, and said: ‘Mr Maynard, I never see any of that lot these days. I don’t know why you ask me? I haven’t seen Maisie in months – except in the street. And I think it’s absolutely revolting that you should ask me to go and put pressure on her. It’s a disgusting thing to do, you know.’

‘I can’t see why,’ he said tiredly, ‘I really can’t. But if you feel it is, then there is nothing more I can say.’

She opened the door and slipped out on to the pavement.

He started the car, and turned to say: ‘I want to give you some advice, young woman. You’d better leave the Kaffirs alone. And you don’t suppose they understand one word of what you say to them, do you?’

Martha said politely: The only language they understand is the sjambok!’

‘Good God,’ he exclaimed, really angry, speaking from his depths. ‘What do you suppose you are going to change? We happen to be in power, so we use power. What is history? A record of misery, brutality and stupidity. That’s all. That’s all it ever will be. What does it matter who runs a country? It’s always a bunch of knaves administering a pack of fools. Look, young woman. If, for reasons that escape me, the process of government interests you, if you really want to have a finger in the pie, then all you’ve got to do is to play your cards right, and put yourself in a position where you have power. For a woman it’s easy. You should marry a politician and run him – easier to marry, in this town, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, than to remain someone’s mistress. If you really want to do the dirty work yourself, then you drop all this socialist nonsense and become a town councillor and eventually get yourself elected …’ He stopped at the look of revulsion on Martha’s face. He was filled with a sense of injustice; he had spoken seriously, to an equal.

As for her, she regarded him steadily like a specimen of horror from a dead epoch; she was positively pale with disgust.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. But you might remember this: while you are running around shouting about socialism and all the rest, this isn’t Britain which makes allowances for social adolescents. This country’s a powder-keg and you know it. The whole thing can go up at any moment – and if you imagine that a horde of savages wouldn’t cut your throat as well as mine, then you’re a fool.’

Martha thought that he looked like a bloodhound as he leaned across the front seat of his car towards her, the deep-set heavy-lidded eyes fixed on her in an irritated gloomy insistence that she must agree with him. She understood he was speaking as one white person to another; and that he knew so little of what she stood for that he could not imagine the appeal would seem contemptible, even irrelevant. She felt as she did when she was with Mrs Carson: she was listening to a voice already dead; as it were the record of a voice which had once made sense.

He even seemed to her rather pathetic. ‘I’m so awfully late,’ she said. He kept the pressure of his gaze on her for a while, his lips compressed; then he arranged the weight of his well-dressed limbs behind the driving-wheel, nodded a formal good-bye and drove off.

Her bicycle leaned against the brick wall of an Indian shop with several others. An Indian youth was leaning in the doorway of the shop framed by dangling beads and spices, watching a couple of black children who squatted on the pavement spinning the pedals of the bicycles; the pedals of half a dozen machines were being kept in flashing motion, dull reddish circles in the light from the sunset. The children hopped from one to another like frogs, spinning the pedals. The moment the Indian youth saw her there he came officiously forward, dragged the black children to their feet, and knocked their heads together. ‘Kaffirs,’ he said, ‘run away from here to the compound. Run away home, black Kaffir-dogs.’ He watched her obsequiously for a favouring smile from the white woman. Martha collected her bicycle, frowning, trying to show that she did not appreciate this gesture, and cycled away fast. Behind her she could hear the shrill voices of the children: ‘Jewboy Indian. Jewboy Indian.’ And the Indian shouted back: ‘Dirty little Kaffir-dogs.’

Martha was suddenly depressed. She thought of Mr Maynard, and of the incident with the bicycle, and felt the depression deepening. It was probably, she decided, because she was tired and had not eaten that day. And she was nearly three-quarters of an hour late for Anton.

Black Ally’s was full of grey-blue uniforms and she could not see Anton. At last she caught sight of him in a corner, eating with a book beside him. He set aside the book as she arrived at his table. He said: ‘I’ve nearly finished.’

‘I was kept by Mr Maynard.’

His eyes focused into suspicion and he said: ‘I hope you were careful.’

She said, laughing: ‘He was saying we mustn’t upset the Kaffirs.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘But Anton, they aren’t idiots. They must know there’s a group or something like it.’

‘We have taken a decision that the group should be secret.’

‘But Anton, what’s the use of taking decisions if …’ But she was unable to go on, because of the intensity of his eyes fixed on her: ‘Decisions are decisions and must be carried out.’

She was now conscious of falling below his level and her own when she used humour to soften his intensity: ‘He said that in Britain it would be all right to be socialists, but to be socialists here meant upsetting white supremacy.’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’ He continued to eat, unsmiling, watching her. ‘And now what was it you wanted to ask me?’

She had not imagined that the ‘personal talk’ with Anton would arise like an item on an agenda; she now felt frivolous because she had been looking forward to something different. She said hurriedly: ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Personal problems are not important anyway.’

‘Yes, yes, we all have our personal problems,’ he remarked between one measured mouthful and another. Then, at the sight of her face, he laid down his knife and fork, and summoned words to his aid. ‘The personal life of a comrade should be arranged so that it interferes as little as possible with work,’ he said. A group of aircraftsmen got up from the next table, and reached out over the heads of Anton and Martha for their caps and jackets which were hanging on a stand in a corner. They grinned at Martha out of the camaraderie all the men from the camp offered ‘the Reds’ in the town. She grinned back and noted that Anton was disapproving. He continued however: ‘For a woman things are more difficult than for a man; and that is why a woman comrade is entitled to help from her male comrades. The problems of women, in my opinion, have not been given sufficient thought in the movement.’ The pronouncement gave Martha a feeling of being liberated into understanding and support, and she waited, hoping Anton would continue. But he was looking around for a waitress. ‘What do you want to eat?’ he inquired.

‘Oh – but you’ve finished, it doesn’t matter.’

‘You’ve eaten a lot of bread. And I suppose you’ll say it’s enough and go upstairs to the meeting. Did you eat at midday? No, probably not. In my opinion, you should make sure of three good meals a day and enough sleep. Yes, yes, you can run around like this for five years, not sleeping and not eating, and then you end in a sickness and are a burden to your comrades. To preserve health is one of the first duties of a comrade.’ This was said in the same way as he had spoken about women: but now she was irritated, thinking that her mother might have said the same sort of thing. She thought: At my age (she was now twenty-three) I should have got over this automatic resentment and desire to escape every time someone puts pressure on me. It’s a reflex from fighting my mother. She said: ‘I’ll try to do better and be more sensible.’

The waitress came over. She had been at school with Martha and they smiled at each other. She held the menu card for Anton in a way that Martha could see meant she was ironically impressed by this queer foreign bird. ‘The young lady will have a large portion of stew and vegetables,’ said Anton. ‘And some stewed fruit.’

The waitress transmitted the order to a black waiter who was passing, like a manageress; and went to flirt maternally with a table full of aircraftsmen. Her tone to the black waiter was automatically sharp and disdainful. Martha noted this familiar phenomenon for the thousandth time, and told Anton about the incident with the Indian store-hand and the black children. Discouragement returned as she talked about it; and Anton listened in silence, finally saying, because she obviously demanded some comment from him: ‘Capitalism creates divisions between human beings which will vanish on the advent of socialism.’

The black waiter deposited a plate in front of her. The waitress interrupted her sparring with the airmen to inquire: ‘Everything all right, Matty?’ and then, to the waiter, ‘Jim, I keep telling you not to …’With a sharp gesture of impatience she followed the waiter, who had gone hastily to the screen that hid the kitchen door. From behind the screen their voices came: ‘Jim, I keep telling you, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times about the knives and forks.’

‘Yes, missus, but the boss said.’

‘I don’t care what the boss said. I’m telling you.’

‘Yes, missus.’

Martha said obstinately: ‘I sometimes think a good deal more than socialism is needed to cure this place.’

‘Socialism,’ said Anton, ‘will cure everything.’

‘You haven’t lived here, you don’t know.’

‘I have the advantage of having been one-fourth a Jew in Nazi Germany.’

This impressed her again with the richness of his experience as compared with hers, and she abdicated, saying nothing further, concentrating on her food.

‘You will ruin your digestion,’ said Anton. The tense mouth creaked into a small fatherly smile.

She thought: I wonder if he tells that silly Austrian woman about her health and her digestion? Her look at him must have been too openly speculative, for his face changed. ‘And who are you bringing to the meeting tonight?’ he asked. It sounded almost accusing; but not, as Martha’s instinct told her, on political grounds: she said flirtatiously: ‘No one. It seems I was too occupied with William to do my work properly.’

He held his eyes on her, so that she felt the heat creep up her neck, and said: ‘As I said before, women have special problems.’ But this time she did not like it: the heat in her face was for distaste of him. She said: ‘I don’t think I want any stewed fruit,’ and got up. He collected his papers, paid for his meal and hers, and followed her to the pavement where she stood, back to the café door, looking at the street. She was thinking: After all, he’s been with that Austrian woman for a long time … If he’s interested in me (and her instinct told her he was) then perhaps I have something in common with her. The thought made her despise herself; for while she pitied Toni Mandel she did not respect her. She reflected: It would be so much more convenient for Anton if he had me instead of her: his life wouldn’t be in two parts. The cynicism of this surprised her, and she said aggressively: ‘Why don’t you bring Mrs Mandel to the group?’

He said: There are people unfitted for politics. She is not a political person.’

‘I thought you said that everyone must be political, that everyone is. You once said that if you were put alone with any person in the world on to a desert island for a week you could convince them of the rightness and logic of communism.’

‘Yes, yes, yes. But meanwhile we must make allowances for circumstances.’ Now they were climbing the dark stairs. ‘So you are not bringing anyone? Do you know who the others are bringing?’

‘I saw Marjorie today. She’s bringing Colin Black.’

Even in the dark of the stairway she could feel that he had stiffened. ‘And who is Colin Black?’

‘You’ve seen him at club meetings. He’s her boy-friend.’

She remembered the special quality of Anton’s regard for Marjorie, and she thought: Perhaps he’s been thinking of taking her on? But he must have noticed that she and Colin were always together? Now the light from the open door of the office shone on to Anton’s face and it was set hard. The office was full of people, Marjorie among them, who was sitting next to Colin. Usually Anton greeted her first, Martha remembered: this time he did not greet anyone but went stiffly to the table, seated himself, and arranged his papers without looking around at the others who, because of his unmistakable command of them, fell silent as they waited where they had arranged themselves on the benches around the walls. On each face was a look of joyful expectancy; and Martha’s spirits rose out of the conflict of doubt and despondency she had felt below, in Black Ally’s and on the pavement. She sat down, examining the new faces.

She knew them all, save for the airmen who were with Andrew, five men in the thick grey uniform, and sitting together with the look of a group within a group. Colin, Marjorie’s young man, was a fat, dark, solid, spectacled civil servant who surveyed them all in turn, solemnly, between affectionate glances at Marjorie. On her other side was an extremely pretty slim dark girl who was a secretary in one of the commercial offices. Her name was Carrie Jones. Jasmine had brought an African whom none of them had seen before, a large man who sat benevolently watching them. Jasmine was also responsible for a married couple, Marie and Piet du Preez. He was a great beefy good-natured fellow, one of the prominent officials in the white trade union movement. His wife was a serious, pleasant-faced woman who looked as if she were dressed for an afternoon tea, wearing a tight floral dress and white high-heeled shoes. On the other side of Piet sat a small lad, an urchin of seventeen or so, a protégé of his, presumably, from the trade union. He had a red and uncomfortable face, peeling from sunburn; aspiring earnest grey eyes; and his hair, rough-gold-surfaced from sunlight, was plastered down with cream, but plastered in vain, for it was already rising in thick lively tufts from his crown.

These fifteen people regarded each other with respectful interest, in such deep silence that the chatter and clatter from Black Ally’s below filled the room together with the smell of food which competed with the chalky office smell.

Andrew McGrew, who had taken off his jacket and made himself comfortable by rolling it into a ball and stuffing it into the small of his back, took the pipe out of his mouth long enough to nod at Anton and say: ‘Let’s shoot.’

Anton had been showing by the set of his shoulders and his lowered hostile head that it had been agreed there should be no more than ten people here tonight. He said without looking up: ‘First it should be made clear on what basis we are assembled.’

Andrew said impatiently: ‘Everyone is here because they believe in communism.’

There was movement around the room, and small exclamations of agreement and interest. Anton’s pale eyes now raised themselves and moved from one face to another: ‘Yes, yes, but we must make our basis for being here clear.’

Andrew seemed about to speak, frowned irritably, and decided against it. Jasmine hastily said, obviously trying to ward off any friction between the two men: ‘It was decided to bring people to this meeting who wanted to be recruited as members. And it was decided that you should give a short lecture on Marxism.’

Anton said stubbornly. ‘It is essential to know whether the people in this room consider themselves recruits as members or not.’

‘I think Mr Hesse is quite right,’ said Piet du Preez. ‘Speaking for myself, I’m not sure where I stand. I don’t mean about communism. I got mixed up in the Party down South last year, and it seems OK to me. But we ought to know about this group. There’s a lot of talk in the town. But is it a formally organized communist group or a discussion group?’

Anton said nothing. Jasmine therefore looked towards Andrew who said: ‘This is a communist group. A secret communist group. But the lads here from the camp came along simply to listen and see if they wanted to join. Comrade Anton seems to think that he shouldn’t speak at all until he knows whether people want to join.’

‘In that case,’ said Anton, ‘it should be defined as follows: the people here have come to listen to a discussion on Marxism, after which they will decide whether or not they will join the group.’

‘But that’s what we said all the time,’ said Marjorie, amused and impatient. Martha had observed that the girl had been trying to catch Anton’s eye to gain from him his usual fatherly approval of her, and was now hurt because his eyes met hers without any sort of acknowledgment. He said coldly: ‘Precisely so. But we have to know exactly how we stand. And now I shall speak for three-quarters of an hour on Marxism, with particular reference to the dialectical materialist conception of history, after which there will be discussion. Then the people present will decide whether or not, on the basis of what they have heard, they wish to join.’

‘Actually,’ said the pretty dark girl, leaning forward, ‘most of us know about the Party, don’t we? I was recruited in London last year. Well of course I was on holiday so perhaps it doesn’t count, but I do know a little, and I thought most people here did.’

Anton, controlling irritation, slowly turned over papers.

Andrew asked: ‘Is there anyone here who has not had some connection with the organized communist party?’

The lad near Piet went dull red. Piet good-naturedly jerked his elbow into him, and put up his hand like a schoolboy and said: ‘I haven’t done anything yet.’

At which the African, Elias Phiri, nodded in reply to Andrew’s glances and said: ‘I’m ignorant of these matters. But I am very interested.’

They regarded him with a warm sympathy: after all, it was on behalf of his people they were all here. He accepted their glances with a broad smile.

‘Now we all know where we are,’ said Andrew. ‘The lads here have had experience in Britain. But it does no harm to have the principles stated.’

‘None at all,’ agreed Anton quietly, holding them with his eyes, one after the other. He began: ‘Comrades, this is the dawn of human history. We have the supreme good fortune and the responsibility to be living at a time when mankind takes the first great step forward from the barbarity and chaos of unplanned production to the sunlight of socialism – from the babyhood of our species to its manhood. Upon us, upon people like us all over the world, the organized members of the communist party, depends the future of mankind, the future of our species.’

He spoke slowly, drawing the sentences out one after another from his brain where they were stored waiting, and handed them to the listeners, his voice measured, unhurrying, not cold so much as anonymous.

Martha found herself leaning forward, tense, on her patch of hard bench. When she looked around, the others were in the same condition of joy and release. It seemed to her this unhurrying voice was cutting the past from her, that ugly past which Maynard had described that afternoon as a record of misery, brutality and stupidity, ‘a bunch of knaves administering a pack of fools’. It was all finished. She was feeling a comprehensive compassion: for the pitiful past, and for the innumerable unhappy people of the world whom she was pledging herself to deliver.

Also, the calm voice was linking her with those parts of her childhood she still owned, the moments of experience which seemed to her enduring and true; the moments of illumination and belief.

It said: ‘Comrades, the infinite complexity of events, each acting and interacting, so that there is no phenomenon in the world which is not linked with and affects every other – in nature nothing happens alone …’ and she was returned to a knowledge of the thrust and push of knitting natural forces which had grappled with the substance of her own flesh, to become part of it, in the moments of illumination in her past.

It said: ‘Comrades, men make their history …’ and she felt her shoulders straighten, with an influx of strength, as if she had been given a gage of trust. So had she felt years ago when the Cohen boys at the station put books into her hands, as if they were giving her a key and trusting her to use it well.

It said: ‘Comrades, the bourgeois illusion of eternity, the illusion that the present system of government is permanent …’ and the terrible fear that haunted her, the nightmare of recurring and fated evil was pushed by the words into a place where it was no longer dangerous.

It said: ‘The motives of men making history in the past were often good; but the ideology of reformers often had no connection with what they actually accomplished; this is the first time in history that men can accomplish what they mean to accomplish; for Marxism is a key to the understanding of phenomena; we, in our epoch, see an end to that terrible process, shown for instance in the French Revolution, when men went to their deaths in thousands for noble ends – in their case, liberty, fraternity and equality, when what they were actually doing was to destroy one class and give another the power to rob and destroy. For the first time consciousness and accomplishment are linked, go hand in hand, supplement each other …’ And Martha felt as if a light had been turned on for her: she might still admire the great men she had been used to admire; they had been misguided, that was all. And she herself need not dwindle out (like her father, for instance) savage with the knowledge of belief betrayed. There could be no more misguided passion for the good, or soured idealism.

She was swung, because of the calm and responsible certainty of Anton Hesse’s voice, on to a state of quiet elation and purpose. She knew that everyone in the room felt as she did. She was linked with them all, and from the deepest needs of her being. The people in the room, listening, exchanged small trusting smiles with each other; eyes, meeting, pledged faith with each other and with all humanity.

Anton Hesse spoke for more than three-quarters of an hour. It would not be said of him that he was carried away – he was not; but his words had the power and passion of the great men from whom he had taken them; and the confiding silence of the fifteen people listening released in him a faith in them which had most certainly been missing when he had begun to speak. His very pale-blue eyes, shining from the white light over his head, moved from one face to another – not in any sort of appeal; but in certainty, because the words he used were a proof of goodness and trust.

He finished with a quiet: ‘And now, comrades, I have laid before you the barest bones of that structure of thought, Marxism. You must not imagine that I have done more than sketch in an outline. If we are to be serious, we must study. We must study hard.’

He let his shoulders loosen and his head drop to his papers, which he shuffled together, as if anxious to be off.

‘I should like to congratulate Comrade Anton on the best brief outline of Marxism I have heard,’ said Andrew. ‘I suggest we appoint him forthwith as Education Officer.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jasmine promptly.

Anton said patiently and ironically: ‘Comrades, may I point out that in the Party one does not appoint an Education Officer, or any other kind of officer on a wave of enthusiasm.’

‘Quite right,’ said Andrew. ‘I apologize.’

‘Is there anyone here who does not want to join the group?’ asked Jasmine.

No one spoke. After a moment it was seen that they were all looking at the African Elias. He smiled and nodded. Andrew said: ‘I think I can speak for the lads from the camp.’ The four airmen with him all nodded.

‘So there’s no one who wants to stay out. Well, of course not,’ said Marjorie excitedly.

One of the airmen, a young Scotsman with flaming hair, turned red and said with a consciously rueful despair: ‘But man, I’m no scholar. If it is going back to school, then I’m willing enough. I left my schooling at fourteen, but I’m an ordinary working lad, that’s all.’

At which the urchin Tommy Brown said: ‘I think the same. I’m not up to all this. I mean, I liked what you said, but I left my schooling at fifteen.’

Anton sat up, fixing his eyes first on the young Scotsman, then on the young Colonial. He said: ‘Comrades, do I understand you to say that the workers are not capable of studying? Of education?’

‘Ah, heck now,’ said the Scotsman. ‘No one says a word against the workers while I’m by. But all this is too high-falutin’ for me, it’s the truth.’

‘No, it is not the truth,’ said Anton Hesse. He leaned forward, holding Murdoch Mathews from the slums of Glasgow with his eyes, while the young man writhed under the cold stare. ‘Comrade, when you speak like that, it means that the propaganda of the capitalist class that the workers are not fit for the best, has affected you. You are a victim of their propaganda. As a worker, you are fit only for the best.’

Murdoch, having tried to exchange humorously desperate glances with Tommy the urchin, who was too serious to be humorous, said: ‘For all that, I don’t understand half of what you say, comrade.’ His tone was still weakly rueful. Under the peremptory urging of Anton’s eyes he sat up, however, and said differently, in a manly responsible tone: ‘But I’m willing. I’m willing to learn if you are willing to teach.’

Comrade Anton turned to Tommy. ‘Comrade Tommy, did you really not understand what I said?’

‘I understood the general thing,’ said Tommy apologetically. ‘But a lot of the words you used were too long.’

‘Then I’m sorry. You must correct me in future. It was always my worst fault. But in a foreign language it is not always the easiest, to find the right words.’

‘You speak English better than me,’ said Tommy, with a mixture of admiration and hostility.

‘Foreigners always speak English better than the English,’ said Marjorie, with such a warmth of admiration for Anton that he glanced up, giving her the small paternal indulgent smile she was used to receive. But Colin Black was admiring her with his eyes; Anton’s face darkened, and he said, looking around the room: ‘And so now, are we all going to work at our theory?’

At this, one of the airmen, who had not spoken at all, a very tall untidy youth with a pale bony face under a lank mass of black hair, said: ‘I would remind you, comrades, that theory should be linked with practice.’

Anton said: ‘You’ve been in the Party?’ He did not say of course, but it was in his manner: the young man’s tone had been as authoritative as his own.

‘Three years,’ said the airman.

‘You are quite right. We do not forget the unity of theory and practice. But before we put our ideas into practice, we need to know what our ideas are. In short, we need to analyse the situation …’ He acknowledged the indulgent glances of the old gang – Jasmine, Martha, Marjorie and Andrew – with an impatient movement of his shoulders. ‘We need, I say, to analyse the situation. Before we can analyse it, we need to discuss it. Before we can discuss it, we need to organize ourselves in such a way that the group has the benefit of the experience and knowledge of every comrade in it. Therefore, we need now to discuss organization.’

‘For the want of a nail the battle was lost,’ said Marie du Preez, smiling humorously. But the humour faded from her face as Anton turned to her and said: ‘Precisely so. We are Marxists – or so called. We therefore apply our minds to an existing situation and act accordingly.’

Marie gave the smallest swallow of resigned amusement, while her husband grinned broadly sideways at her lowered cheek.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Anton, and waited.

‘I formally propose,’ said Andrew, ‘that Comrade Hesse should put forward his plan for the organization of the group.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jasmine. No one disagreed.

Anton proposed that there should be a formal group meeting every week, attendance obligatory, for group business, reports on work done, criticism and self-criticism. Also, that there should be a meeting every week, attendance obligatory, for Marxist education. Also, that there should be a meeting every week, attendance obligatory, for education in political organization.

‘That’s three evenings,’ said the stern dark young man. ‘Some of us don’t get that off in a week.’

‘And what about my girl-friend?’ said Murdoch, waggishly; but Anton said: ‘Never mind your girl-friend,’ and he subsided, with a loud sigh.

Three evenings being out of the question, and it being pointed out that this small group of people were committed to running half a dozen of the town’s most lively and demanding organizations, it was agreed that there should be one obligatory group meeting, which would combine education with organization. That the airforce men should get lectures on Marxism from Andrew in the camp. That the group should be secret. That there should be no membership cards. That they would be bound only by their agreement to obey discipline and the will of the majority.

‘Why should it be secret?’ inquired young Tommy Brown at this point. ‘I mean to say, this is a democracy, isn’t it?’ There was a shout of laughter at these words, and they glanced at the African Elias, who said good-naturedly, ‘Yes, this is a democracy all right.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Tommy uncomfortably. Then he leaned forward across the others, and said earnestly to Elias: ‘I’m sorry, Comrade Elias. I’ve got a lot to learn yet.’

Elias waved his large hand at him benevolently.

‘Having agreed that this is a democracy, and that a Party would not be allowed to exist, we shall keep it secret,’ said Anton.

Bill Bluett, the stern airman, said: ‘There’s nothing much secret about it – I heard there was a group months ago in the camp.’

‘Since we seemed unable to decide ourselves whether there was a group or not, we are not surprised you are confused,’ said Anton. ‘But in future we must behave like revolutionaries and not like a lot of chickens.’

The group rose from the hard benches, stretching and rubbing themselves. Elias said he must go at once. They all felt bad; he was going first, they knew, because it would be so awkward for them when they descended the stairs in a body and probably decided to go together to a café where he would not be allowed to enter. They all warmly said good night to him, shaking his hand. It occurred to them as they did so that they would not shake each other’s hands: the effort to avoid some forms of racial discrimination leads often enough to others,

Elias went; the airforce men departed to their bus. The civilians remained, and, finding it painful to part, went downstairs to Black Ally’s for coffee, where they talked, as always, with a painful yearning nostalgia about the Soviet Union.

The du Preez left first – the married couple. Then Marjorie departed with Colin. The small grimaces and raised eyebrows that followed their departure said that the group acknowledged these two as a good couple; the excitable charm of Marjorie seemed a satisfactory match with the phlegmatic common sense of Colin.

Anton, Jasmine, Martha, Tommy and Carrie remained.

Tommy, red with earnestness, his hair in tufts all over his head, was talking to Jasmine about the deficiencies of his education. She promised to meet him tomorrow at four, after work, to discuss a reading list. Carrie was keeping the pressure of her very pretty dark eyes on Anton. Martha thought she must be attracted to him, and was surprised to feel a small pang of jealousy. This made her abrupt and awkward in her manner to Anton. But neither of the two young women had the benefit of their emotions, for Anton rose, saying calmly: ‘I must get my sleep,’ and left them with a formal nod.

And now it was midnight, and there was no excuse to stay longer. Assuring each other of their reunion at the earliest possible opportunity next day, they parted.

Martha found Mrs Carson standing in her darkened kitchen in nothing but a thin nightdress, her ear pressed to the crack of the door which led into the garden, shivering with cold and with enjoyable fear. This evening it was easy for Martha to soothe the poor woman, and to persuade her into her bed.